Delete contents of folders windowswinsxs and windowsInstaller in Windows Server Enterprise SP2 Dont ever manually delete anything in those folders. The first one contains multiple versions of system files and DLLs, so that any program can find the exact version it requires, thus solving the long dreaded DLL hell problem. Unfortunately, this has the side effect of the folder contents growing in size each time any update is installed. Winsxs Folder What Is It' title='Winsxs Folder What Is It' />But manually deleting anything from there can and will harm your system, possibly to the point of rendering it unusable. The second folder stores the Windows Installer files for installed applications, so that they are available if you or the system need to repair, modify or uninstall an application. If you remove files from there, next time you try to repair, modify or uninstall an application you will be asked to provide its Windows Installer package, which you will probably not have anymore, or which could be quite difficult to extract from the original installation media or setup files. Just dont touch anything there, even if it takes up some space. Install Curl On Php Windows Msi. Those files need to be there in order for your system to work as intended. Deleting files from the Windows Sidebyside WinSxS folder is a bad idea. But, you can shrink the WinSxS folder with vsp1cln. Why does the winsxs folder grow so large. If you have Vista and have SP2 installed. Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards N64 Rom'>Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards N64 Rom. GB WinSxS folder on Windows Vista. My winsxs folder is. Gb in size, how can I. Does anyone know of a way that actually works to shrink the size of the winsxs folder on Server 2008 SP2. Winsxs growing out of control on. Windows Vista SP2. Windows uses a system folder called WinSxS to. How to Save Space By Cleaning Windows. WinSxS folder as well. Use Disk Cleanup to Delete Old. Help Im running Windows Vista not sure what Service Pack, and the winsxs subfolder in the Windows folder is HUGE 90GB of a 140GB laptop hard drive. I. Windows Server. Easiest way to reduce the folder is to run disk cleanup and remove Windows Update. Winsxs Cleanup Windows 7' title='Winsxs Cleanup Windows 7' />Winsxs Folder Windows 10How to Reduce the Size of Your Win. SXS Folder on Windows 7 or 8. The Win. SXS folder at C WindowsWin. SXS is massive and continues to grow the longer you have Windows installed. This folder builds up unnecessary files over time, such as old versions of system components. This folder also contains files for uninstalled, disabled Windows components. Even if you dont have a Windows component installed, it will be present in your Win. SXS folder, taking up space. Why the Win. SXS Folder Gets too Big. The Win. SXS folder contains all Windows system components. In fact, component files elsewhere in Windows are just links to files contained in the Win. SXS folder. The Win. SXS folder contains every operating system file. When Windows installs updates, it drops the new Windows component in the Win. SXS folder and keeps the old component in the Win. SXS folder. This means that every Windows Update you install increases the size of your Win. SXS folder. This allows you to uninstall operating system updates from the Control Panel, which can be useful in the case of a buggy update but its a feature thats rarely used. Vectorworks Serial Mac here. Windows 7 dealt with this by including a feature that allows Windows to clean up old Windows update files after you install a new Windows service pack. The idea was that the system could be cleaned up regularly along with service packs. However, Windows 7 only saw one service pack Service Pack 1 released in 2. Microsoft has no intention of launching another. This means that, for more than three years, Windows update uninstallation files have been building up on Windows 7 systems and couldnt be easily removed. Clean Up Update Files. To fix this problem, Microsoft recently backported a feature from Windows 8 to Windows 7. They did this without much fanfare it was rolled out in a typical minor operating system update, the kind that dont generally add new features. To clean up such update files, open the Disk Cleanup wizard tap the Windows key, type disk cleanup into the Start menu, and press Enter. Click the Clean up System Files button, enable the Windows Update Cleanup option and click OK. If youve been using your Windows 7 system for a few years, youll likely be able to free several gigabytes of space. The next time you reboot after doing this, Windows will take a few minutes to clean up system files before you can log in and use your desktop. If you dont see this feature in the Disk Cleanup window, youre likely behind on your updates install the latest updates from Windows Update. Windows 8 and 8. 1 include built in features that do this automatically. In fact, theres a Start. Component. Cleanup scheduled task included with Windows that will automatically run in the background, cleaning up components 3. This 3. 0 day period gives you time to uninstall an update if it causes problems. If youd like to manually clean up updates, you can also use the Windows Update Cleanup option in the Disk Usage window, just as you can on Windows 7. To open it, tap the Windows key, type disk cleanup to perform a search, and click the Free up disk space by removing unnecessary files shortcut that appears. Windows 8. These commands must be run in an elevated Command Prompt in other words, start the Command Prompt window as Administrator. For example, the following command will uninstall all previous versions of components without the scheduled tasks 3. DISM. exe online Cleanup Image Start. Component. Cleanup. The following command will remove files needed for uninstallation of service packs. You wont be able to uninstall any currently installed service packs after running this command DISM. Cleanup Image SPSuperseded. The following command will remove all old versions of every component. You wont be able to uninstall any currently installed service packs or updates after this completes DISM. Cleanup Image Start. Component. Cleanup Reset. Base. Remove Features on Demand. Modern versions of Windows allow you to enable or disable Windows features on demand. Youll find a list of these features in the Windows Features window you can access from the Control Panel. Even features you dont have installed that is, the features you see unchecked in this window are stored on your hard drive in your Win. SXS folder. If you choose to install them, theyll be made available from your Win. SXS folder. This means you wont have to download anything or provide Windows installation media to install these features. However, these features take up space. While this shouldnt matter on typical computers, users with extremely low amounts of storage or Windows server administrators who want to slim their Windows installs down to the smallest possible set of system files may want to get these files off their hard drives. For this reason, Windows 8 added a new option that allows you to remove these uninstalled components from the Win. SXS folder entirely, freeing up space. If you choose to install the removed components later, Windows will prompt you to download the component files from Microsoft. To do this, open a Command Prompt window as Administrator. Use the following command to see the features available to you DISM. Online English Get Features Format Table. Youll see a table of feature names and their states. To remove a feature from your system, youd use the following command, replacing NAME with the name of the feature you want to remove. You can get the feature name you need from the table above. DISM. exe Online Disable Feature featurename NAME Remove. If you run the Get Features command again, youll now see that the feature has a status of Disabled with Payload Removed instead of just Disabled. Thats how you know its not taking up space on your computers hard drive. If youre trying to slim down a Windows system as much as possible, be sure to check out our lists of ways to free up disk space on Windows and reduce the space used by system files.